Posted
by
Soulskill
on Wednesday October 01, 2008 @07:43PM
from the sharing-fantasies dept.

Eurogamer reports on some good news for fans of the Final Fantasy series: a new game is in development for the Nintendo Wii and DS systems.
"It's said to be titled Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time. ... the game will apparently be playable on both machines at once, thanks to the spiffing new Pollux engine. So, while whoever is the best negotiator/fighter/Wii owner is playing on the big screen, another lucky adventurer can wade in on the DS, presumably following around and summoning Ifrit on their elder siblings. This harks back to the series' origins on DS, with the first CC game enjoying the relative splendour of Gamecube/GBA link-up play."

Crystal Chronicles was good *IF* you had the necessary hardware to play the game the way it was meant to be played. This meant 4 GBAs and 4 link cables... not something the average gamer owned (even finding three friends with link cables was a task).

Nintendo at times has this thing for insanely ridiculous hardware requirements for their console games, but if you manage to gather the hardware, it's definitely a worthy gaming experience.

This meant 4 GBAs and 4 link cables... not something the average gamer owned (even finding three friends with link cables was a task).

So, it's a lot like Four Swords [wikipedia.org] and Four Swords Adventures [wikipedia.org], then? Well, save for the fact that Adventures required four GameBoy Advances, four GameCube/GBA link cables, AND a copy of the GameCube game.

Methinks the current (Nintendo DS) solution of downloading stubs of games over WiFi works a lot better than the hardware-junkie scheme Nintendo tried to sell before. One would

I don't think it's entirely accidental that the Wii and the DS can communicate over WiFi. Nintendo liked the idea of the GCN/GBA cable. WiFi offered them the option of providing the same service without the extra hardware.

No, I mean, the Wii targets massive parties. Not sitting in your basement by yourself playing Mario 64 or StarFox; not running a full 600 hour run for 100% completion of all side quests in Final Fantasy; but actually embracing, exploring, and enhancing the game play of Mario Party and Super Smash Bros. You might have 3 friends over, or you might have a 16 person tournament in Brawl; but the Wii's made for it.

I think we're talking about the same thing. The GCN/GBA connectivity was a true party idea. Same with the 4-GBA linkup. Wifi opens up a huge field of cooperative and competitive play between those who have a console and those who have a handheld. And that's why I say that it's not entirely accidental that the Wii and DS can communicate.:)

"Nintendo at times has this thing for insanely ridiculous hardware requirements for their console games, but if you manage to gather the hardware, it's definitely a worthy gaming experience."

As an owner of crystal chronicles, it was a complete letdown even with mutiplayer. The game was too simplified and it wasn't final fantasy at all, not in the slightest. Everything about FF: CC was disjoint and disconnected. They had some wonderful graphics but the world did not cohere well at all, FF: CC is probably one of the craziest projects square has ever green lighted, I can't understand how they would make a different game for the gamecube and not a true final fantasy.

FF: CC was originally some other game whom they grafted into the fold, I wish they had not named it FF:CC but they wanted free money and a lot of stupid people bought it on the name (as they knew)

It was a dishonest thing IMHO. I thought they were seriously releasing an FF, when I played FF:CC I was like : WTF IS THIS?? that's what my reaction was... a crappy overly simplistic button mashing action game.

Anyway, since the Playstation, Square and Sony have enjoyed a fruitful business relationship like Square and Nintendo did back in the 8/16bit era. What came as a surprise is that they released a FF title for Nintendo at all. It wasn't so surprising the game turned out to be wholly different from a regular Final Fantasy and, ultimately, such an unpleasant experience (whi

I bought Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, Ring of Fates and had the same "WTF is THIS?" reaction.

The real-time combat isn't entirely unprecedented, Final Fantasy Adventure [wikipedia.org] for the original Game Boy was like that. But FFA didn't have three companions with piss-poor AI, a broken magic system, bad voice acting, and an expectation that I use the stylus and control pad at the same time.

I wish someone would port Final Fantasy 7 to the DS, rather than making another crappy FF:CC

Final fantasy adventure was actually the same story... Not a Final Fantasy game at all, just slapped the name on it to whore it out (too bad, because it was a good game in its own right. Same for the SaGa-turned-"Final Fantasy Legend" series).

Agreed. We had 2 gba's and i bought a link cable to try it out. Horrible game. The gameplay was reasonably fun when you got in the game, but in the meantime, as the second player, you basically fell asleep while the lead player handled moving around and all the out side of combat stuff. Epically boring. If the game was 2 player the whole way through, I could have liked it more, but I had better things to do with my time then wait for an opportunity to play the fun part of the game.

loupgarou21 bought a wii on speculation that the new controller would bring new, innovative games.

loupgarou21 is disappointed that the new games that take advantage of the new controller are crap, and all halfway decent games for the wii are just rehashing the same nintendo big sellers that have come out for the last 30 years, only they make you shake the the damned controller to do simple things that shouldn't require shaking a controller.

And what loupgarou21 says holds perfectly true for it. It's not doing anything you couldn't do on a mouse and keyboard and if you play for more than 30 minutes at a time, it gets very uncomfortable. Plus the Metroid Prime gameplay has now been through 3 iterations with almost no changes (or significant graphical uplifts) and is now feeling very, very dated.

To date, the only first party game for the Wii I've found that I actually genuinely like is Super Smash Bros Brawl, which has decent productio

The big problem I have with Mario Kart is that they have surgically excised both skill and fun from the game. There are too many racers on the track at once now... too many weapons being fired off constantly on every side. Moreover, the way the game penalises players for driving well by giving players behind them super-powered weapons that are impossible to evade means that the only way to win on 100cc setting is to deliberately drive badly until the second half of the final lap.

Moreover, the way the game penalises players for driving well by giving players behind them super-powered weapons that are impossible to evade...

Er... you do realize that Mario Kart has been doing this since Mario Kart 64, at least, right? It's always been a viable strategy to drop back a bit and then pull ahead using good items at the last moment.

I thought that the control system for MP3:C was very nice, and with some refinement I think that the Wii controls could really make for some great twitch shooters!

I think playing fast shooters like Nexuiz [alientrap.org] or Q3 or UT or such would be a blast with that control scheme. I found it very fast to target things, if they sped up the spin / turn around capability when you point off screen, I think it would be the first scheme to contend with the mouse.

Thing is, I'm really not anti-Wii, I actually really like the console and have been messing around with the homebrew stuff a lot. I just wish that more thought went into making good, unique games for the console rather than trying to figure out how to integrate the motion sensing and pointing ability of the controller into what are basically the same games that came out for the previous Nintendo consoles.

If you can't think of a good way to use that motion sensing as a part of the game, don't try to cram it

From what I'm reading, they're doing games for all the platforms, besides the DS and Wii getting a couple of exclusives, the PS3 and PSP are getting a couple of exclusives themselves. The Xbox 360 is only getting one game though if memory serves me right.

I grew out of final fantasy at FF VII. That was a truly terrible game. Firstly, the battles were completely drawn out so long as to make them excruciatingly painful. Seriously, 30 second cut scenes for each attack is not something I want to deal with. Secondly, the game was completely linear. They'd ask you a bunch of questions to make it seem like you had a choice, but eventually all answers lead to the same conclusion. Also, you didn't even have to wander around to figure out where to go. You prett